Group, community give wounded veteran, family 'unbelievable' reason to move

Operation Finally Home builds house for Amarillo soldier

Jose Torrez, left, and Federico Lopez install the ceiling of a house being donated by Operation Finally Home and Permian Homes to Sgt. Ross Cox, a soldier who was injured by an improvised explosive device in 2011 while he was deployed in Afghanistan.

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Army Sgt. Ross Cox, his wife, Nicole, and their four children are moving to Odessa. They don’t have a job awaiting them, and currently, have no prospects. But they’re moving there for one very good reason — a four-bedroom, 2,800-square foot house that’s entirely paid for is waiting.

“Of course, it’s unbelievable,” said Ross. “Now that I’m getting closer to getting out, this has given us a hope for a future that we would not otherwise have. It’s something to look forward to. The future is not just a scary black hole anymore.”

It certainly was scary just more than a year ago — on Nov. 15, 2011, to be exact. That’s when Cox was leading his Stryker brigade on a reconnaissance mission in southern Afghanistan. He was walking in a drainage ditch when his left foot stepped on an improvised explosive device.

The explosion knocked soldiers in front and behind him 10 feet. For Cox, it blew off his left foot, ripped into his left leg, shattered his right leg and ripped apart his ear drums. If not for the new protective Kevlar underwear, Cox said he surely would have been killed.

“Nicole called me, hysterical, telling me Ross had been seriously injured,” said her mother, Becky Bryant, an Amarillo hairdresser. “I was with a room full of ladies and I lost it. I scared everyone to death.”

Bryant left to go to Fort Wainwright in Alaska to help take care of her four grandchildren while an uncertain future confronted their parents, who grew up in Amarillo. After his third deployment to Afghanistan, Cox, 37, had hoped to soon get into Officer Candidate School and eventually retire from the Army in 2020.

Now he was in surgery in Germany, the first of eight surgeries in the last year. Cox arrived at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio on Nov. 21. Wounds were many, but the worst was amputation of his left leg and severe hearing loss.

The Army, through eight years of infantry duty sandwiched around four years as a recruiter in Dumas and Lubbock, had at least provided a structured life. Soon that would be over.

Nicole, a 1995 Randall High School graduate, had been searching for some kind of resettlement assistance, She discovered Operation Finally Home, a nonprofit organization that provides mortgage-free homes to wounded veterans to help get their lives back on track.

Cox was in rehabilitation at the Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, while Nicole and children Peyton, 14, Brennan, 10, Hope, 4, and Asher, 3, were living in base housing at Fort Sam Houston. They soon received a call from the New Braunfels branch of Operation Finally Home asking them to travel to Odessa.

“We thought we were going there to interview for the possibility with some other eligible families,” Cox said. “We looked around and said, ‘Where are the other people?’ They said, ‘Hey, we’re not here to interview you for a home. We’re here to give you a home.’

David Martin, owner of Permian Homes in Odessa, had been contacted by Operation Finally Home to build the Coxes a house.

“We knew it was for a good cause,” Martin told the Odessa American, “and we have a lot of resources with our subcontractors to build a home for free.”

Odessa, with the lure of a $350,000 house, looked like a dandy place to start a post-Army future. Nicole will continue to homeschool their children and Cox is one credit shy of getting a business degree online from Liberty University.

“We had been thinking about where we were going to start our lives together, where we were going to live,” he said. “That pretty much summed it up right there. This is where God wanted us to be.”

Evidently a lot of Odessans wanted them there as well. There was a painting party in September when volunteers joined the Cox family in sprucing up the new house. A 5K run in Odessa a month ago helped raise money for furnishings. Management for Ashley Furniture in Lubbock saw that and allowed the Cox family to pick out furniture they would need.

“Their lives have been totally changed by this and so have ours,” Martin said. “We are lucky to have a family like that in our community.”

For the last month, the house on Raphael Street in Odessa has been off-limits to the Coxes as Permian Homes and its subcontractors complete the finishing touches and the furniture comes in.

Taking a page out of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” the Coxes will see their finished house in a presentation on Saturday. Among those joining the christening will be Darrel and Brenda Bryant, and Ross’ parents, Jeff and Carol Allen, all from Amarillo.

His year in recovery and rehab in San Antonio put Cox in daily contact with other veterans — many of them younger — also attempting to adjust to life without limbs.

“Seeing younger guys, some 19 years old, missing three limbs, they’re going to have more of their life without legs than with legs, and that breaks my heart,” he said. “But, yes, this is the hardest thing I’ve done in my life. It’s tough.”

But a house, one without a mortgage, helps, and an organization pays gratitude to the sacrifice of an Amarillo soldier and his family.

“It’s one of those things you can’t comprehend until it happens,” he said. “It’s absolutely unbelievable.”

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Thanks Army Sgt. Ross Cox for your service to our country. It makes me proud to be an American to read and/or hear about groups and agencies that offer their services such as this to our wounded soldiers. I know it is not much, but thank you for not only your sacrifice but also the sacrifice your family has experienced.

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